1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an electronic camera, and more particularly to an electronic camera that is capable of ideally determining an image-capturing angle of view for a dark object.
2. Description of Related Art
One of the well-known electronic cameras such as a digital still camera has a liquid crystal display (LCD) for displaying image-capturing conditions, recorded images, etc. This electronic camera is capable of displaying a live image on the LCD at the moment of capturing the image through an imaging device before recording of a still image. Thus, the LCD can be used as a finder to determine the image-capturing angle of view and what is included in an image to be recorded. When the live image is displayed on the LCD, however, the maximum exposure time of the imaging device is fixed at a video rate (e.g., 1/60 second for an NTSC signal). For this reason, there is a limit to the adjustment of the exposure time of the imaging device, and if the object is very dark, the live image displayed on the LCD is too dark to determine the image-capturing angle of view.
There is also a well-known electronic camera provided with an optical finder along with or without the LCD. In this electronic camera, the optical finder, not the LCD, can be used to determine the image-capturing angle of view to thereby reduce the consumption of the electricity. The optical finder enables the user to determine the image-capturing angle of view for the dark object that could not be determined on the LCD. However, it is impossible to directly determine by the optical finder an image actually-captured by the CCD, and therefore, it is more difficult to acquire a desired image compared with the case of using the LCD as the finder. Moreover, if the object is very dark, the image-capturing angle of view sometimes cannot be determined even with the optical finder.
There is another well-known electronic camera provided with a preview capturing function of capturing an image in the same manner as in the regular image-recording, displaying the captured image on the LCD, and storing the captured image in a storage medium such as a memory card if the image is a desired one after the user looks over the image. Even if the object is dark, this electronic camera is able to acquire a preview image with a proper brightness by using an electronic flash, and the image-capturing angle of view can be determined in view of the preview image. This determination of the image-capturing angle of view in the preview capturing, however, aims at knowing whether the image that has been captured is a desired one or not. If the object is dark in particular, it is difficult to acquire a desired image without failure in one image-capturing as stated above. Moreover, once the electronic flash is activated in the preview capturing, the next image-capturing with the electronic flash cannot be started until a capacitor for the electronic flash is sufficiently recharged. For this reason, there is a possibility of missing a good opportunity for an image recording.